GENERAL VIEW OF THE PROCEDURE.
Looking over this whole procedure, with the eyes of one accustomed to juridical reasoning, it is impossible to resist the conviction, that a train of more gross inconsistencies, practised with a more barefaced audacity, or for a worse purpose, does not stain and disgrace the page of history. The arrest was against the law of nations; the constitution of the court was against the military law; the mode of conducting the trial was against the law of France; the sentence was contrary to the forms of every civilized nation; the execution was a contravention of the laws of God and man. It would be absurd to term the slaughter of the Duke d'Enghien a murder committed by the sword of justice, unless we understand Hogarth's parody of that allegorical figure, with one eye open, one scale depressed with a bribe, and a butcher's knife in her hand instead of the even-swayed sword.
Having endeavoured to trace this bloody and cruel proceeding in a legal point of view, we must, before leaving the subject, consider what apologies have been set up against the black charge which arises out of the details.
The first of these screens would have been doubly convenient, providing it could have been rendered plausible. It amounted to the transference of the more active part of the guilt from Napoleon himself to Talleyrand, whom it would have been delicious revenge to have overwhelmed with the odium of a crime which must have made an impassable gulf between the ex-imperial minister and the restored royal family. Napoleon therefore repeatedly hinted and expressed, that the measure of the Duke d'Enghien's death had been thrust upon him by the advice of Talleyrand, and that, without giving the matter due consideration, he had adopted the course recommended to him. It was afterwards still more broadly averred, that Talleyrand had intercepted a letter written by the prince from Strasburg, begging his life, and offering, in grateful return, to serve Napoleon in his armies. This boon Napoleon intimates he might have granted, if Talleyrand had delivered the letter; but by intercepting it, that statesman became the actual murderer of the unfortunate prince.
There are two modes of considering every allegation, that is, according to the presumptive, or the positive and direct evidence brought in support of it. If we look at the former, we cannot discern the shadow of a motive why Talleyrand, however unprincipled we may suppose him, should have led his master into the commission of a great and odious crime, of which he was likely to have the whole unpopularity thrown upon himself, so soon as it should be found too heavy for his principal. Talleyrand was a politician; but so far as we have ever heard, possessed of no bloodthirsty disposition, and being himself descended from a noble family, was unlikely, to say the least, to urge the catastrophe of a young prince, against whom, or his family, he is never believed to have had any especial enmity. On the other hand, if we suppose him guided to the step by foolish and misguided zeal for Buonaparte's own interest, we traduce Talleyrand's mental capacity as much in the one case, as we should do his natural disposition in the other. No man knew better than the Prince of Beneventum, that power is, in enlightened nations, dependent on public opinion, and that the blood of an innocent and high-spirited enemy might indeed stain his master's throne, but could not cement its basis.—Again, if we regard the spirit displayed by the Duke d'Enghien upon his mock trial, when he declared he would not recall his avowed enmity to the French, in conformity to the hints thrown out by the court-martial, how is it possible that the same individual can be supposed capable of having, two days before, crouched to Buonaparte for his life; or how are we to reconcile his having offered to accept service under the first consul, with his declaration that it did not become a Condé to enter France, save with arms in his hands? We must suppose him a madman, if, having endeavoured to creep to Buonaparte's favour by the means of submission, he should have assumed an air of contumacy and defiance towards the judges who were to report his conduct on his trial to the first consul. The existence of the letter, and the fact of its being intercepted by Talleyrand, is, therefore, disproved as far as it can be, both by the character of the alleged writer, and of the minister for foreign affairs.
But, farther, it is disproved not only by reasoning à priori, but directly and from the state of facts, as far as negative evidence possibly can go. The whole proceedings against the Duke d'Enghien took place under the Counsellor of State, Real, and was managed entirely by the police; those safe, silent agents, who acted by immediate directions from the supreme head of the government, like the mutes of the seraglio, and were not liable to the control of any subordinate minister. Talleyrand never interfered, nor indeed had an opportunity of interfering, in it.
It was an officer of the police who was sent to inquire into the state of things at Ettenheim; and his report was made not to Talleyrand, not even to his proper chief, Real—but to Buonaparte himself. This is proved by Savary's own narrative, who says expressly, that "the first inspector of the gendarmerie received the report from the officer, and carried it himself to the first consul, instead of giving it to M. Real." The troops employed in the act of seizing the Duke d'Enghien, were also gendarmes, that is, policemen; and had a letter been written by their prisoner at Strasburg, or any where else, it would certainly have gone, like the report above mentioned, to the first consul, and not to Talleyrand to the foreign department. 2dly, There is a sad, but minute memorial of his imprisonment, kept by the duke as a sort of diary. In this record is no mention of his having written such a letter. 3dly, As the Baron St. Jacques, secretary to the unfortunate prince, was with his master constantly until the duke was taken from Strasburg, he was in a situation to offer a formal testimony against the very allegation of such a letter having been written, since he must have become acquainted with it, if it had any real existence. 4thly, The gendarmes who collected the duke's few papers, and made an inventory of them, would not have failed to secure such a document, if, as we said before, there had been such a document to secure.
For all these reasons, the story of the suppressed letter must be considered, from beginning to end, as an absolute fiction, invented to absolve Napoleon of what he felt was generally considered as a great crime, and to transfer the odium to Talleyrand, whose active offices in behalf of the royal family, his former master could neither forget nor forgive.
But the story of the letter was not the only one to which Napoleon had recourse to qualify the public indignation, which was so generally directed against him as the author of this unhappy deed.